Community Centre

Year2019

CategoryCivic Amenities

LocationSedlčany

StatusCompleted

We have designed the community centre, located close to the historic centre of Sedlčany, as an ensemble of two architecturally distinct yet compositionally linked buildings – an expressive prayer hall and a more restrained apartment building.

We conceive the expressive form of the prayer hall as a sculptural crystal made up of five angled planar surfaces that symbolically lift the whole building towards the sky. A unique double-skin façade of expanded aluminium mesh combined with red film creates a kinetic effect: seen up close, the warm red tone dominates, while from a distance and depending on the incident sunlight it turns into a silvery jewel. The clean, white interior radiates warmth through its timber surfaces and a carefully considered use of light, which, through large-format openings and a rooflight, opens the spiritual space towards the exterior and the adjacent park.

The apartment building anchors the ensemble and lends it an urban character. Between the two buildings we create a sheltered courtyard park. The result is a coherent urban ensemble that naturally connects the spiritual, community and residential life of the new town centre.

Client	PASSERINVEST GROUP, a.s.
Collaboration	Maddalena Losindaco Adéla Létalová Maxim Dydunyk
Design team	Martin Krupauer Pavel Kvintus Daniel Jeništa Stanislava Blažková

A Dialogue of Two Volumes

We base the urban concept on the tension and mutual composition of two different typologies. The more traditionally conceived apartment building is subordinate in its expression and composition to the prayer hall and creates a high-quality spatial frame for it. It is designed as a simple, even austere form that responds to the distinctive shape of the prayer hall with an inclined plane at the rear.

The shape of the prayer hall derives from the intersection of a crystalline form with the organic shape of a curve. The solid mass, composed of individual surfaces and lines and firmly anchored to the ground, symbolises the defined space of life. The curve, as a soft organic element, represents the spontaneity and dynamism of life and disrupts the balance of the solid form.

Light, Material and a Changing Façade

The architectural focus of the prayer hall is its technologically and aesthetically innovative façade cladding. The structure of the prayer hall consists of three concrete slabs bracing one another. We wrap the reinforced concrete shell structure in a lightweight expanded aluminium mesh. The red-toned layer beneath it sets up an optical play of colour and light. As one moves around the building, the façade smoothly changes its expression from cool silver to a rich, warm colour, so that the building responds naturally to the time of day, the weather and the observer’s angle of view. The spiritual dimension of the building is expressed through a vertical composition of light and a generous glazed surface above the pulpit.

Interior and Liturgical Space

Lengthwise, the interior is divided by vertical walls, while crosswise the walls are inclined. The composition of the main hall culminates above the most important liturgical element, the baptismal font, which forms the heart of the entire prayer hall. The sculptor Jaroslava Kadlecová conceived its shape as a transcription of the liturgical act of baptism.

The side chapels on the left of the hall create raised spaces for more intimate liturgy. By contrast, the generously conceived ceremonial entrance at the rear of the main hall expresses the openness of the space and blurs the boundary between exterior and interior.

The atmosphere of the prayer hall is underlined by the combination of the white surfaces of the floor, walls and ceiling with the light timber of the interior, which contrasts with the building’s exterior appearance. Good acoustics in the main hall are ensured by timber panelling with layers that absorb sound waves. The ventilation and cooling systems are also concealed behind the acoustic panelling.

Apartment Building

The mixed-use apartment building borrows from the formal language of the prayer hall the principle of “cutting away” volumes. From the basic cubic volume we cut away the corner facing the courtyard, the loggias and the ground floor. The building thus gains a dynamic yet refined expression that communicates with the surrounding organically grown fabric of Sedlčany and provides high-quality facilities for tenants as well as the associated community and retail services on the ground floor.